


Law Enforcement in Lebanon, Kansas

by AugustStories



Series: Personal Writing Challenge October 2019 [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Demons, Law Enforcement, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), When you can't decide between fandoms on a prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 10:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20906012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AugustStories/pseuds/AugustStories
Summary: Agent Tommy Gabel only wanted a few vacation days in his childhood home of Lebanon, he expected the tranquility he had grown up with.What he got was three guys talking about murder directly behind him in the diner.





	Law Enforcement in Lebanon, Kansas

**Author's Note:**

> Tommy Gabel is an original character introduced in the drabble "If Only", but that doesn't need to be read to understand this.
> 
> To support my friend with her inktober challenge, I made myself a writing challenge so she wouldn't be handling prompt works on a daily basis alone. I will be posting all works that aren't based on original writing where you guys wouldn't understand the context, this is day five.

There were a couple of downsides to a job in law enforcement, and next to all the risks to life and sanity, it was most predominantly the fact that you were never really off duty. You could never just leave the job at the office, that's not how it went. You didn't stop being an officer or an agent just because the clock said you were done with active duty for the day or because the calender said it was vacation time. Crimes happened whether or not you were on the clock, and you couldn't just turn deaf ears or blind eyes to it.

Especially not when people were talking about murder right behind you.

Agent Tommy Gabel – Commander of the Avengers' tactical support team – had been politely excused into taking some vacation days and maybe he really hadn't wanted to but James Barnes wasn't someone you said to it when he was holding a tablet and was threatening you in a gentle Brooklyn drawl with getting Captain America involved. So, reluctantly enough, Tommy took some time off, handed control of his team over into the trusted hands of his SIC and then drove back home to his native Kansas.

\--

Lebanon had basically not changed at all from when he had spent his childhood and most of his teenage years there. It was still a boring so normal quiet Kansas small town, the kind that Tommy had missed dearly after his father had drank himself into his grave and his mother had taken him to Virginia to live with her parents. The relationship with his mother had quickly turned sour not long after and he had joined the military first and foremost to get away from her controlling nature.

To be back now felt weird maybe but also like he was maybe finally able to get some closure on a chapter of his life that he had mostly ignored later on. His childhood home was gone, torn down and built anew in more vibrant colors, but the old decrepit abandoned factory outside of town was still there. Tommy had spent a great amount of time hiding out there after his parents had been fighting more and more. And he was planning to drive out there later again to wander around a little and retrace his old paths, but until then he had made himself comfortable in one of the diners.

He was scrolling around on his phone – never off, never too far away, even on vacation he was still an AI agent – and reading through the news on his laptop when the three men walked in and took a seat in the booth next to his, putting his back to them. They didn't look out of place for Lebanon at all. The taller two in plaid shirts, jeans and all weather jackets, the smaller on in that typical accountant look, probably a couple of friends meeting for a snack during lunch break. Tommy's attention wasn't taken by them at all, especially not when one of the waitresses greeted them with "the usual?"

He was reading up on some political tension in one of Wakanda's neighbouring countries when a single whispered statement caught his ears and let his instincts violently flare up like a beacon.

"I'm not really surprised that you murdered him." Judging by the sound and distance of the voice, Tommy deduced that it must have come from one of the taller guys sitting directly behind him. He kept his eyes on the laptop screen but set his phone down. "But we really could have done without it. I needed him to talk."

"What the hell was I supposed to do?" A deeper voice growled warningly back, he sounded like he was chewing and speaking at the same time. "We were cornered. Cas was holding back three others, didn't really have a choice. And he ran into my knife anyway."

"He did seem rather uncoordinated," a gravelly voice jumped to the guy's defense and Tommy felt like he had jumped into some kind of Twilight Zone. He had been a Shield Strike agent for three years and then worked for the Avengers ever since in a similar way but he had never encountered someone talking this publicly about murder.

What. The. Fuck.

"I don't really care about the specifics. How the hell are we supposed to get information now if you two keep on killing our only leads." The first man spoke again and Tommy asked himself if he had left his gun and badge in the hotel room safe or the secure box in the trunk of his car. This was clearly a severe case of serial killers going on, would it be better to go straight to the local police or follow them to wherever they were shacked up? Some information gathering could be better still... right? Guy Number One was talking again before Tommy's inner freak out came to any useful conclusions. "We are running out of time, guys, if the cage breaks before we have the blade back, we're screwed."

"Listen, I didn't smoke those bastards out, Sam. They'll find a new meat suit and then they'll come back. As pissed as I made them, they'll want revenge." Guy Number Two was still chewing and talking but also...

What?

What?!

"Let's just finish up here and then get back to the bunker," Gravel Voice Guy seemed the peacemaker in that group of psychopaths, "I've got some things I wanna read up about again. I have the feeling we're missing something."

Tommy ordered the check, packed up his stuff and then planted himself in his car to wait. He was definitely going to follow these guys to their bunker, they would not kill another person.

\--

Tommy had always been sneaky and careful in nature, and together with his desire to catch the bad guys, defend his country and protect the innocent it had brought him straight to the military. Phyiscal fitness and a smart quick head had led him to the Special Ops and from there straight to Shield and Strike.

His spy training had still been more out of surival instincts than job demand when he needed to doge Hydra fractions after DC and Shield's downfall. He had turned from observant to vigilant and maybe even slightly paranoid, and after Rumlow had reappeared on the villain scene with his vendettas, Tommy had opted to learn even more tricks. He was glad nowadays that he was able to keep Natasha Romanov in his memory as a teacher as well as an Avenger he had worked alongside of.

She had taught him a lot in so little time and he had successfully managed to stay clear of the mercenaries Rumlow had sent after him to clean up and make sure the Avengers had no one who had ever known him as more than a Strike Commander. Tommy would never be able to disappear into thin air as Romanov had been capable of, or like Barton and Barnes were still pretty capable of, but he could become unnoticable quite easily.

\--

Tommy didn't have to wait long until the three guys stepped out of the diner, he pretended to be fiddling with the navigation system of his car as the three men walked over to the shining black Impala parked right across the street. The one with the lighter short hair got behind the wheel, the giant one took the passenger seat and the wannabe accountant took the back.

They pulled out onto the stree and Tommy followed them at a distance, stomach rolling in surprise when their path took them not only straight out of town but also on a direct path to Tommy's old teenage hang out. Before they reached the old factory gate though the Impala took a dirt path and vanished into the treeline, Tommy frowned and drove past that spot. He parked his car around the corner of the street, grabbed his badge and gun from where they were thankfully available in his trunk and then exchanged jeans jacket for the darker warmer hiking one he had packed for later to go exactly here.

He tracked his way back and then cautiously walked down the dirt path until he froze at the sudden sound of gunfire and fighting. He clicked the safety off on his gun in the next moment and braced himself as he moved forward again, finger on the triffer, gun raised in front of himself. And still, ten years in this job, ten years of seeing impossible things, none of it prepared him for the sight he was met with as he turned around the curve in the path.

Parked in front of a garage like half overgrown building that stood at the dead end of the dirtpath, the Impala's doors were all open. The wannabee accountant was just then throwing himself across the hood of the car to slam his hands against the foreheads of two guys in black suits, light came pouring from his hands and the suited men's eyes in the next moment before the accountant guy whirled around to stab a silver blade into the shoulder of another man.

The guys in jeans were fighting back to back, guns and knives and Tommy just couldn't process what he was seeing, especially not when not a moment later three guys appeared on the path maybe halfway between him and the two tall guys fighting against their now black smoke expelling opponents.

Not even really thinking about what he was doing, Tommy took one hand off the gun and blindly reached for his phone in the left pocket of his jacket. His fingers fired off the official numerical distress code that the agency gave to every employee and then send it off to the first number on his contact list which maybe fittingly enough was Barnes.

And then he made a mistake, or better said he didn't prevent himself from making a mistake when his phone gave the not turned off sound of successfully having send a message. The three men still standing like observers in front of him, or whatever kind of abomination they were, whirled around and Tommy rushed to put both his hands back onto his gun.

"Don't move," he called out in warning, "hand over your weapons and lay down on the ground with your hands behind your back!" All he got in reaction was a smile on three faces, behind the middle one's left shoulder Tommy could spot the guy who had driven the Impale whirl around to stare in his direction. "I'm not gonna say it again. This is Agent Gabel for the Avengers Initiative, hand over your weapons and lay down on the ground!"

"Oh, we're gonna have fun," the middle one of the black suits chuckled and then he threw back his head and opened his mouth, Tommy's mind turned blank, so utterly blank when black smoke began to rise from said mouth. And then, just as the Impala driver screamed a "NO" Tommy's world turned black.

**Author's Note:**

> I may or may not have a prompt line at a later point this month that could continue this.


End file.
